Valiant's Coward
by timenspace
Summary: another side to The Master, that you thought you knew. Some Master/Lucy. Mainly focuses on The Master's madness, and possibly "inner conflict" if you can call it that. Takes place on Valiant, the day before the countdown. *oneshot*


**Story: _Valiant's Coward_**

**Characters: Harry Saxon, aka The Master, Lucy Saxon. The Doctor and Jack are mentioned but do not play a key role**

**Setting: _The Valiant, _Saxon's private quarters**

**Rating: T+, considering the mind probe.**

**R&R, please. **

Harry sat at his desk, rubbing his temples in frustration. _Would the drumming never end? _He's done _everything _right - he's destroying the human race - reducing them to mindless puppetts, and now he's out to destroy the Universe - to hold the raw power of the Vortex of Time and Space in his hands, and then crush it in his fists.

The Doctor is nothing but a powerless _pet, _his spirit nearly broken, his abilities to disappear and to regenerate gone. Like a bird in a cage with clipped wings. He smiles at the image, going over his final equations, to make sure that everything is in place. He _was _good at this at the Acadamy - wasn't he? It all feels so long ago - The Vortex - his call to war - his life being saved causing an appointment with _destiny..._but it's all a blissfully blurred memory.

A champion of a beautiful woman that closely resembled _her. _The woman at the Acadamy. The beautiful girl he had stumbled to speak to in his youth, that he would do almost anything to gain favors from. What was her name again? _Nashada?_ He wasn't sure. A bit of his past seemed to be missing...

His wars with The Doctor first and foremost in his mind, the past two - almost three - years before the most vivid in his mind.

He glances up at his wife, her bare shoulders rising and falling as she sleeps. She's stayed away from him these past days and he knows why, and yet, The Master doesn't quite have enough of a thing called love spread between his two hearts to care.

_"You didn't tell me you were pregnant!"_

_"I-I d-didn't know Harry, I swear!"  
_  
_"Don't call me that! Call me by my name!"_

_A shatter sob shakes her body. "Harry, please..." _

_He punches her flat in the eye, and his ring catches leaving a mark. "Don't _ever. C_all me that. Again." He says in a voice full of venom. _

He's a bit sorry now, but not sorry enough to apologize. The Master is never _that _sorry, especially to a human woman. He watches her, she's got her back to him, and she's curled against her side of the bed as though afraid. How can she sleep at a time like this? It all begins tomorrow, for to a Timelord, it is one infinate nothing. But it is really tomorrow this time, and finally his war with the Universe will be unleashed. And the Doctor, the silly best friend from Acadamy with his eccentric ways and love for his half-peoples, is powerless to stop him.

Finally the victory of death...that glorious music to drown the constant _drumming _in his mind. She'd promised. He's trapped in her web, but he's too proud of a man to admit it.

He's been trapped since she dared the Doctor after...well, he'd rather not remember the Doctor's heroisim at that occurance...and he'd been ensnared...It hadn't really been much of a deal, he was just supposed to do her bidding and the drumming would leave. Or so she had promised. But his former best friend was always putting a bit of a wrinkle in his plans. With a growl, he crumples the piece of paper on which he's been scribbling and tosses it in the trash. It misses, but he doesn't care anymore.

He blinks tiredly. He may as well get some rest while he's able, and he takes off his suit and tie, and lays in only his boxers beside his wife, crawling between the black silk sheets. Lucy stirred slightly, muttering something incoherent. He touches his fingertips to her mind, and begins to probe. Out of sheer boredom. She's having the same blissful dream again, of them in a cottage with a happy family, and no worries in the entire world. He wants to laugh at such a rediculous wish, but a part of him feels a stab of pain.

It's quickly brushed away as he probes futher. And it reveals what he's originally suspected. She is pregnant, though the sex of the child is unsure. Something tells him its a girl with his smile. He smiles slightly, caught up in just the moment for the briefest of seconds. Then his happiness is gone, and the drumbeat begins again.

He isn't sure weather to kiss his wife fiercely, and make up for the other day, or abide by his usual procedure: just not care. He doesn't know weather he should hate her or not for allowing this to happen. Don't human women have preventitive measures for this sort of thing?

He want's a Timelord race, not a half-botched child. She'll never really be fully Timelord. With Gallifrey gone, who knows what she'll lack in matters of Rassillion-knows-what. And she's impure blood. Human blood.

He feels sure that Lady Death will want to claim the child, and so he disconnects: its just another human that dies inside his wife. He doesn't _care _weather it's a boy or a girl, and doesn't bother to probe further.

Lucy stirs as he withdraws from her mind, leaving traces of his Timelord energy within her brainwaves. _He knows..._

He is the Master, after all, the Master of _what? The human race or the entire Universe? Or the death thereof. _The Master of Decimation. _Too mathmatical sounding...._

Shrugging, he rolls over to doze, knowing that he won't sleep for more that a couple of hours with that infernal drumming. But no matter. He can always go below Deck and kill Jack again, or taunt the Doctor.

He claps his hands over his ears, not caring if he has wife awakens.

_How can anyone sleep over that infernal noise?_


End file.
